The literary journal, long a staple of university writing programs, is stepping out, thanks in part to the Internet and a flock of risk-taking writers.

In Pittsburgh, as editor Lee Gutkind's "Creative Nonfiction" journal turns 10 this fall, at least five publications -- Salt, Caketrain, the New Yinzer, River Walk Journal and Paper Street -- are in the crawling and toddling stages.

Salt and the New Yinzer have been around for two-plus years. River Walk Journal, Caketrain and Paper Street published their first issues in the spring.

Rob Casper of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses said this growth is not part of a national trend. CLMP has 450 members. Also atypical is that none of the new Pittsburgh-based publications is affiliated with a university writing program.

Traditionally, a literary journal comes out in an academic setting twice or three times a year -- some in book form, others as magazines -- and may include poetry, book reviews, short stories and narrative nonfiction. Because most do not carry ads or make money from subscriptions (with circulations generally under 5,000), they bleed red ink. Editors spend much of their labor drumming up financial support from arts councils and foundations. The majority of start-ups do not last beyond a few years, Casper said. Venerable models include the Paris Review, Graywolf Press, Plowshares and the Kenyon Review.

The journals that survive do so because the people behind them are not in it for the money: "It's a labor of love," said Casper. "I'm very proud of the members we have, who have chosen to devote their lives to something that is not valued monetarily in our culture but has been instrumental in our culture's development."

The National Endowment for the Arts is the largest granter, and one of few remaining. Cliff Becker, literature director for the NEA, said 40 to 50 percent of the NEA's publishing budget goes to literary journals and presses.

"The literary magazine is the reader's window onto the frontlines of contemporary literature," he said. "It's where tomorrow's work is."

A literary history

Casper said the optimism of start-ups in Pittsburgh may owe to this city's literary history. "I spent a year in Pittsburgh and remember a strong literary community there, with great literary traditions. People like Jack Gilbert, August Wilson and John Edgar Wideman all probably got their first publications in independent literary magazines."

Nurturing a literary journal is "a thankless task" but one with potential for great influence, said Becker, noting that Charles Frazier had published only one piece, in the tiny Kansas Quarterly, before publication of his best-selling "Cold Mountain."

Gutkind said literary editors are compelled to start journals by what is lacking in our culture: "The world of publishing is becoming so competitively commercial that there's no room for the serious writer. And the reason journals and small literary presses are beginning to survive is that there are more and more writers."

When Gutkind started the creative nonfiction program at the University of Pittsburgh 12 years ago, it was the first master of fine arts program in the country. Now, he said, 18 universities offer master of fine arts degrees in creative nonfiction.

To illustrate literary writers' starvation for a forum, Poets and Writers magazine cited the small Virginia-based journal Shenandoah's circulation of 1,300 copies in contrast to the more than 15,000 submissions it receives each year.

At the same time, the National Endowment for the Arts reports that fewer Americans are reading anything, much less literature. Yet, Casper said, "this is a fruitful time in American letters because there have been more varied ways to get your work out there in the world."

The Internet has made publishing good-looking, glossy journals easier, he said. "We have some members, Web publishers, who list their budgets as zero."

Most publications are themeless, but Gutkind said his journal bucks that tradition. "Nonfiction is subject-based and should feature writers who have points to make." The most recent issue of Creative Nonfiction is devoted to Mexican voices. Last summer's issue focused on health care and, as a result, has given the journal a windfall opportunity, a contract with Southern Methodist University Press to republish as a book.

"I'm trying to stay alive and do what I think the genre is supposed to do," said Gutkind. Creative Nonfiction's 10th anniversary celebration includes a festival Nov. 8-14, at which John Edgar Wideman will return to his hometown to speak.

'Filling a vacuum'

Creative Nonfiction is one of three Pittsburgh members of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. The others are Paper Street and the Latin American Literary Review. LALR is in its 33rd year, with a circulation of 1,000. Yvette Miller, a Chilean who was teaching at Carnegie Mellon University at the time she started the journal, now edits it full time. It has survived with funding from the NEA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in part because "we were filling a vacuum," she said.

River Walk Journal is an online bimonthly whose editor and publisher, Elizabeth Ross, raised the idea for the journal to her online circle of writers and editors. "We helped each other get their work to a publishable state, but then, where do we publish?" she said. "We would like to go into print, in magazine form, but would have to file for charitable status to get funding."

The New Yinzer has been publishing online since January 2002 but has ceased its monthly effort for the printed word, said Jennifer Meccariello, director, president and a graduate student in the creative nonfiction program at Pitt.

"When we started, our goal was to be a monthly print magazine," she said. The Internet was a low-budget way to get started. "But the Web site was never going to make us money, and we were spending most of our time doing that. We realize we need to support ourselves when grants don't."

The focus will be to publish anthologies and a monthly one-story subscription. The Web site will remain, to keep one story a month online and to sell merchandise and books. The New Yinzer has received Sprout Fund grants and will have a Pennsylvania Partners in Arts grant for the next anthology in November.

Paper Street debuted this spring with a press run of 1,000 copies and already has 105 subscribers. When Arlan Hess and a friend first advertised for submissions, they had a goal of 150 subscriptions in the first year.

She said she is encouraged by the quality of submissions, which she reads in the summers, a year in advance. "Maybe I'm being optimistic" to think that more people are reading literature than in the past. "But when we're told that nobody's reading literature, to accept it means the audience will never get bigger."

Paper Street gets its name from the phenomenon of the city's hillside steps that, on paper, are considered streets.

"We are very rooted in Pittsburgh," said Hess, who teaches English at Washington & Jefferson College. She said she does not consider other journals competition. They all have their own vision, direction and target contributors. "Our competition is the video game, the megaplex."

Her inspiration for the journal came with some reflection with friend and eventual journal co-founder Dory Adams after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "We talked about what we were doing with our lives.

"What I think is that the opposite of war is not peace; it is creation. I wanted to work toward the world I wanted to live in, and in that world, there is more poetry."